the shadow of the understanding. It is rather the rain and the light from which the intellect derives nourishment and strength. Those who assert or imagine, that a weak and unfurnished mind is the most genial soil for piety, affirm that of which they are ignorant, and slander that which they cannot comprehend.

It is our object, in the following paper, to maintain the position, that eminent piety has an important and salutary influence on the mental powers; that soundness of the understanding is promoted by goodness of the heart; or, in other words, that the performance of duty towards God contributes to the improvement and expansion of the mind.

1. The teaching of the Scriptures on this point is clear and decisive. They uniformly connect holiness with knowledge, both in their historical facts and preceptive instructions. Why did God select Moses to be the lawgiver and guide of his people during their forty years' pilgrimage? Why did he confer on one man, for nearly half a century, powers almost absolute? Not because the Levite was slow of speech; not because he was a meek man, any further than his meekness was a qualification for his work. Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, as well as in that practical experience which he had acquired in his long sojourn in the deserts of Arabia. A man was demanded, for the service, of great powers of mind, ready to meet emergences, whose acknowledged talents would overawe the fractious multitude, whose clear intellect, coöperating with the Divine teaching, could frame a wise system of laws, and also enable him to act as the only historian of the world for almost one half of its duration thus far. God did not alight upon Moses by accident. He selected him as

probably the only man in the nation competent to the work. Again, why were the principal writers of the Old Testament taken from the most intelligent men of their times, some of them priests, who were required to be educated? Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the writer of the book of Job, considered merely in an intellectual point of view, would have been the glory of any age.

It is sometimes said, that Christ chose illiterate fishermen to be the principal promulgators of his religion. But does this imply that they were men of feeble powers of

intellect? Was Luke deficient in ability to investigate his subject, and present it in an appropriate and original style? Was not James (the author of the epistle) a very close observer of men, and has he not a very characteristic manner? Illiterate most of them were, in the Jewish sense of the term. They were not profound doctors of the law; they were not learned Gamaliels in the traditions of the elders; but they were men of sound sense, and, in one respect, well educated, for who ever equalled their teacher? He that labored more than they all, who wrote the greater part of the doctrinal compositions of the New Testament,-why was he selected for his extraordinary mission? Doubtless because God is wise in fitting means to ends. He chose to convert a man of a most strongly marked character, in order to do a strongly marked work. He could have turned one of the stones in the streets of Tarsus into a foreign missionary. He could have inspired the feeblest intellect in Judea to wield the eloquence of an angel. But he preferred to take Apollos who had been well instructed in the preparatory dispensation of John, and who could reason mightily with the Jews. It is in uniform accordance with God's arrangement to do nothing unnecessary; he employs and strengthens existing instrumentalities, rather than creates new ones.

The wise and noble, whom Paul mentions as having been cast off by the Almighty, were wise in their own conceit. He has particular reference, probably, to the sophists, who were numerous, at that time, in the Grecian cities, and who were as destitute of common sense and of true knowledge as they could well be; men who possessed hardly any thing but acuteness, or a wire-drawn subtilty, fine prototypes of the hair-splitters and angelical doctors of a later age. If these sophists had entered the church, they would have filled it with their empty wranglings.

Instead of dissevering knowledge from religion, the Bible is fraught with instructions to the contrary. Give me understanding, and I shall observe thy law with my whole heart. Teach me knowledge and good judgment. O how love I thy law; it is my meditation all the day. The entrance of thy word giveth light; it giveth understanding to the simple. Paul exhorts his disciples to the constant study of the new religion, on the ground that in

the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known to the children of men, there were contained all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He directs them to strengthen themselves with might in the inner man, that they may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of Jesus. He declares that every Christian, in proportion as he is indeed a Christian, has received the Spirit, that searcheth all things, yea, even the deep things of God. He proceeds further still; he terms the doctrines of faith, repentance, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment, the elementary lessons, food for babes, and reprimands his disciples for not having advanced into the mysteries of their religion.

These passages have a primary reference, unquestionably, to religious knowledge, or to the employment of the mind on religious subjects. But they cannot be considered as excluding other kinds of knowledge. They require by implication, if not directly, that degree of culture and enlargement of the mental powers, which is necessary to comprehend the deeper mysteries of the Christian faith. They also imply that the study of these mysteries must have a beneficial effect on the mind. Else, godliness would not be profitable for all things. One of the principal things would be excluded from its benign influence.

2. Eminent piety must exert a favorable effect on the mind from the nature of piety itself. True religion cannot exist, without a degree of knowledge. It cannot grow, without a corresponding growth in knowledge. "It is impossible," remarks a distinguished writer, "that the affections should be kept constant to an object which gives no employment to the understanding. The energies of the intellect, increase of insight, and enlarging views, are necessary to keep alive the substantial faith in the heart. They are the appointed fuel to the sacred fire."* stances there are, indeed, of persons in lowly life, of uncommon apparent spirituality and elevation of religious feeling, who possess but a moderate degree of intelligence. Yet such are diligent readers of the Bible, and they

*See Coleridge's Lay Sermons.

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are accustomed to estimate highly the scanty knowledge of secular subjects with which they are favored. On the contrary, the individuals who have wrought the greatest mischief in the church of Christ, are those who were, at first, regarded as eminently pious, that is, possessed of ardent emotions and of burning zeal, but who were accustomed to clamor against human learning, to throw contempt on a properly trained ministry, and disparage religious truth, as distinguished from religious feeling.

A common definition of eminent piety is this: "An entire consecration to God, a devotement of all the faculties to his service." Yet many Christians would seem to take the faculties in their existing state, whatever that may be, as thus to be dedicated. But our Master requires whatever we can be, as well as what we are. He demands the attainable, as well as the attainment, the possible, as well as the existing. The hope, the aspiration, the strenuous endeavor, the fresh acquisition belong to him. Why has he given us the principle of intellectual curiosity? Most certainly that he might stimulate us in the path of intellectual and religious knowledge. If we stifle this curiosity, if we bury it up, if we have not an enthusiasm even, in the occupying of all the talents with which God has endued us, then we are not consecrating ourselves to him. We do not give him our best offerings. We withhold the freshest fruits. We present the stale manna of yesterday. The great mass of people in a Christian country are placed in a situation where constant advance in knowledge, more or less, is an indispensable duty. But, in the degree that we neglect or lightly esteem the cultivation of our intellectual powers, we are not (so far as an essential element is concerned) in the process of attaining eminent piety. We are inclined to shut out every thing of this nature from the supervision of conscience; we do not feel the emotion of remorse, unless there be some overt act, or some moral delinquency. Our powers of mind may run utterly waste, and yet the conscience take no cognizance. We have hid a part of our Lord's money in a napkin.

The idea of eminent piety which floats in the public mind is limited to a single ingredient, namely, fervent emotion, the possession, and, particularly, the display of strong feeling. We read the diaries of distinguished

saints, and we estimate their holiness according to the number of passages in which rapturous emotion is expressed. Such passages are contagious. In reading them, our sympathies are excited, and, so far, we are incapable of judging in respect to the more silent and unobtrusive marks of eminent sanctification. Doubtless, emotion is one of the principal constituents of true religion. Without a degree of it, piety, of course, must be wholly wanting. Our spiritual relations are such in their nature as to awaken the deepest feelings of which man is capable. A clear idea of God must fill the soul with the profoundest reverence. The love of Jesus must stir every bosom which is not colder than ice. That man is insane, so far as this matter is concerned, who is not pervaded with solemn awe, in contemplating an eternal, personal existence in heaven or in hell. Still, emotion is but one of the ingredients of eminent spirituality. We have no right to make this the only test of an elevated Christian. There are other essential characteristics, essential to a high degree of holiness, if not to its existence in any measure. By limiting the characteristics of distinguished piety to one or two things, however important these may be, we undervalue the influence of knowledge, and diminish too much the number of eminently pious men. We degrade from that rank some individuals who are fully entitled to it, men of uncommon intellectual endowments and acquisitions, and whose piety may be regarded with suspicion because it has not all the fervency which men of smaller intellectual powers might have exhibited. Some of the hidden, or less notorious qualities of piety, which we are accustomed to overlook, are among the most important in their bearing on the mental faculties. It may be pertinent, therefore, briefly to advert to them.

One of these qualities might be termed humanity, the possession of humane sentiments, tenderness, generosity, disinterestedness. The apostle Peter refers to it, when he enjoins on his disciples to be pitiful, to be courteous. We too often see individuals who make loud and boastful professions of piety, who are, notwithstanding, hardhearted; generous, possibly, in their conduct towards some persons, morose or neglectful in relation to others; earnest in their proffers of friendship, deficient in real kindness; liberal in their contributions towards the gen